“Obviously the other burglars thought it was valuable, too.” Paxton gestured to the art. “Otherwise why would they try to steal it?”
Nikki stepped away from the painting and faced him. “I don’t know, Noah. Why don’t you tell me?”
He took his time before he answered, looking at her to gauge if she was asking a rhetorical question or something with more stink on it. He couldn’t have liked the way her eyes were boring into him, but he went for rhetorical. “I could only guess.”
If her session at the medical examiner’s that morning was theater, for Nikki this was Brazilian jujitsu and she was done boxing. On to the grappling. “Do you know a Gerald Buckley?”
Paxton squeezed his mouth into an upside-down U. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“Curious, Noah. Gerald Buckley knows you. He’s the overnight doorman here.” She watched him work his earnest face. Nikki found him almost convincing; he wasn’t bad. She was better. “Here’s a refresher. Buckley’s the man you hired to set up the second burglary during the blackout.”
“That’s a lie. I don’t even know him.”
“Now that is truly weird,” said Ochoa from the archway. Paxton was edgy. He hadn’t seen the other two detectives return, and he flinched when Ochoa spoke. “Me and my partner took a drive up to Tarrytown this afternoon. To a bar there.”
Raley said, “Place called the, uh, Sleepy Swallow?”
“Whatever,” said Ochoa. “Guess that’s your regular hang, right? Everybody knows you. And the bartender and a waitress both ID’d Mr. Buckley sitting at your table for a very long time a few nights ago.”
“During the blackout,” added Raley. “About the time Buckley should have been in for that shift he canceled.”
“Buckley is not your strongest point man,” said Heat. Noah’s eyes were getting less focused and he whipped his head from detective to detective as each spoke, like he was following the ball at a tennis match.
“Dude caved like a sandcastle,” added Ochoa.
“Buckley also says you called him up and told him to hurry over here to the Guilford and let Pochenko in the rooftop door. That was just before Matthew Starr was murdered,” said Nikki.
“Pochenko? Who’s Pochenko?”
“Smooth. Not going to trip you up, am I?” said Heat. “Pochenko’s somebody whose picture you didn’t recognize in my photo array. Even though I showed his picture to you twice. Once here, once at your office.”
“You’re fishing. This is all speculation. You’re putting everything on hearsay from a liar. An alcoholic who’s desperate for money.” Paxton was standing in a direct sun ray from one of the high windows, and his forehead glistened in the light. “Yes, I’ll admit I met this Buckley guy at the Swallow. But only because he was shaking me down. I used him a couple of times to arrange hookers for Matthew and he was trying to extort hush money out of me.” Paxton raised his chin and thrust his hands in his pockets, body English for that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, thought Nikki.
“Let’s talk about money, Noah. Remember that little transgression of yours my forensic accountants uncovered? That time when you fudged the books to hide a few hundred grand from Matthew?”
“I already told you that was for his kid’s college.”
“Let’s pretend that’s the truth for now.” Nikki didn’t believe him but was applying another rule of jujitsu: When you’re closing in for a takedown, don’t get faked into a sucker hold. “Whatever your reason, you managed to cover your tracks by putting that money back two years ago, right after one of the paintings from this collection, a Jacques-Louis David, got fenced for that exact amount. A coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Ochoa shook his head. “No way.”
“The detective is definitely not coincidence-friendly,” said Raley.
“Is that how you started, Noah? You needed a few grand so you had one of his paintings forged and then swapped it for the real one, which you sold? You said yourself that Matthew Starr was a philistine. The man never had a clue the painting you put on his wall was a fake, did he?”
“That’s bold,” said Ochoa.
“And you got bolder. After you saw how easy it was to get away with that, you tried it with another painting, and another, and then started flipping the whole collection like that, piece by piece, over time. Do you know Alfred Hitchcock?”
“Why, is he accusing me of the Great Train Robbery?”
“Somebody asked him once if the perfect crime had ever been committed. He said yes. And when the interviewer asked him what it was, Hitchcock said, ‘We don’t know, that’s what makes it perfect.’ ”
Nikki joined Ochoa and Raley near the archway. “I have to hand it to you, swapping the real paintings for the fakes was the perfect crime. Until Matthew suddenly decided to sell. Then your crime no longer would be secret. The appraiser had to be silenced first, so you had Pochenko kill her. And then you had Pochenko come here and throw Matthew over that balcony railing.”
“Who is this Pochenko? You keep talking about this guy like I’m supposed to know who he is.”
Nikki beckoned him to her. “Come here.”
Paxton hesitated, eyeing the front door, but he came over to stand near the archway with the detectives.
“Take a look at these paintings. Any one you like, Noah, take a good long look.” He leaned closer to one, gave it a cursory examination, then turned to her.
“OK, so?” he said.
“When Gerald Buckley gave you up, he also gave up the address of the storage facility where you instructed him to deliver the stolen paintings. Today, I got a search warrant for it. And guess what I found there.” She gestured to the collection hanging there in the glow of the orange light of the setting sun. “The original Starr Collection.”
Paxton tried to keep his cool, but his jaw dropped. He twirled to look again at the painting. And then the one beside it.
“That’s right, Noah. These are the originals you stole. The forgeries are still in the piano crate in the basement.”
Paxton was coming unglued. He stepped from painting to painting, shaken, his breath rasping.
Detective Heat continued, “I must say that storage facility you rented is first-rate. Climate-controlled, state- of-the-art fire technology, and very secure. They have the highest definition surveillance cameras I’ve seen. Look at one of the freeze-frames I got off it. It’s a small picture but quite sharp.”
Paxton held out an unsteady hand. Nikki gave him a still-frame print from the storage security camera. He became even more ashen.
“We’re still going over their archives. So far, they have video of you bringing one piece of Matthew Starr’s art into your storage unit about every eight weeks. This particular shot of you was taken a month ago, carrying a very big painting.” She pointed across the room to a large-format canvas. “It’s that one over there.” Paxton didn’t even bother to turn; he just gaped at the photo in his hands. “But that’s not my favorite picture. This is my favorite.”
She nodded to Ochoa, who yanked the shroud off the frame on the wall beside him, revealing a blow-up of another security still. “Time code says it was taken one-point-six seconds after the picture in your hands. That is one jumbo canvas, Mr. Paxton. Too unwieldy and too valuable for one man to risk carrying it by himself. And look who that is coming around the corner helping you by holding the back end.”
Paxton forgot all about the photo in his hands and let it flutter to the floor. He stared in disbelief at the framed surveillance picture on the wall of him carrying the painting, assisted by Vitya Pochenko.
He dropped his head and his body sagged. He fumbled to brace himself on the back of a sofa.
“Noah Paxton, you’re under arrest for the murders of Matthew Starr and Barbara Deerfield.” Nikki turned away from him to Raley and Ochoa. “Cuff hi—”
“Gun,” shouted Roach in tandem. Raley and Ochoa went for their hips. Nikki already had her hand on her Sig in its holster. But when she whirled back to Paxton, he was holding his gun on her.
“He got it from the couch cushion,” said Raley.
“Drop it, Paxton,” said Heat. She didn’t draw but took a step closer, trying to position herself for a disarm. He took two steps back, well out of reach.
“Don’t,” he said. “I’ll do it, I will.” His hand was quaking and Nikki worried he’d fire by accident, so she stayed
